JEEPERS
CREEPERS II

Director:
Victor Salva

Victor
Salva's sequel to Jeepers Creepers
further dissipates the power and mystery of the Creeper character.
Remember how scary he was when you
first saw him, throwing a body down the chute into his basement lair?
Now he's been turned from a truly malevolent force into
a grinning Freddy Krueger wannabe. Jeepers Creepers 2 pits the Creeper against a school
bus full of high school jocks and cheerleaders, and the results are
entirely predictable.

The
2.35:1 anamorphic transfer on Pathé's Region 2 DVD is remarkably good.
Most of the film takes place at night, but the scenes that take place in
bright sunshine look gorgeous.

The
colours are often highly saturated, deliberately so, but seem
natural. Apparent detail is very good, and contrast is almost perfect
(making even the night scenes look clear and film-like). There is a
smidgeon of edge-enhancement evident, on scenes where it would be most
obvious, but this shouldn't be a problem for most viewers. The average
bitrate is 5.55Mb/s. The film is spread over both layers of a DVD-9, with
a reasonably good layer change.

The
disc offers a rich Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (at 448kbps),
showcasing Bennett Salvay's thunderous score. The mix is very satisfying,
but not outstanding. The disc also offers a stereo audio description track
(for the visually-impaired) and optional HoH English subtitles for the
film only. The disc retains the film's original on-screen captions.

BONUS
FEATURES

The
film is supported by some excellent bonus material, which adds significant
value.

There
are two commentary tracks. The first gathers together most of the featured
cast members (with the notable exception of Twin Peaks' Ray Wise),
and is ably hosted by Victor Salva. The track is light-hearted. Salva does
much of the talking, prompting anecdotes from his cast at appropriate
moments. The second track, by actor Jonathan Breck, storyboard artist /
Creeper concept artist Brad Parker and Makeup Effects Supervisor Brian
Penikas, is also worth listening to, and adds a lot more factual
information.

The
Behind The Scenes section is divided into six sections: The Making
of Jeepers Creepers 2, Creeper Composer, A Day In Hell, Creeper
Creation, Digital Effects and The Creepers Lair.

Lights...
Camera... Creeper: Making Jeepers Creepers 2 (14m)
is a basic introduction to the film. It begins with Salva admitting that
he wrote the “every twenty-third spring...” mythology into the original
film specifically to prevent a sequel being made. He reasoned that if the
studio wanted to make a sequel, they’d either have to set it in the past,
or in the future, neither of which would be a particularly attractive
proposition for a studio. However, since the
original film made a pot-load of gold (about five times its $10m budget),
a sequel became inevitable.

Victor
Salva interviews talented composer Bennett Salvay in Creeper Composer (9m).
Salvay, who also scored the original film. They discuss the differences
between the two films (there’s far more action music in the sequel), and
briefly touch on other issues that are rarely aired in public, including the
extent of an orchestrators contribution to a score, and the use of
"temp tracks" (cues from other scores, which are added to the rough
edit
of the film in lieu of the finished music, which the producers or director
will sometimes ask the composer to mimic).

A
Day In Hell… On the Set of Jeepers Creepers 2 (26m)
follows Victor Salva during a typical day’s shooting. It shows Salva
directing part of a bus attack sequence (while simultaneously overseeing
green-screen filming on an adjacent stage), making decisions on the fly,
and briefing his cast and crew.

Creeper
Creation (11m) features the work
of Brad Parker (who drew the storyboards for the film, and created the
look of the Creeper) and Brian Penikas (who transformed Brad’s ideas into the
Creeper as he’s seen in the films).

This
section shows how storyboards can be
used to shape a film sequence, and how they can assist a director in
shooting the film. Actor Jonathan Breck is also interviewed, and Victor
Salva speculates about the Creeper’s origins (he offers the theory that
the Creeper was human at one point).

Jeepers
Creepers 2 – The Orphanage Visual Effects (4m)
is a
terrific show-reel from effects company The Orphanage, showing Creeper
animation tests, CGI models, and how various effects layers are composited
together to build the final image. There were about five digital shots on
the original film, and about a hundred and forty in the sequel (mostly, it
seems, dealing with the Creeper flying). This featurette only represents the tip of
the iceberg, but it’s sufficient.

The
Creepers Lair [sic] is an
animated storyboard sequence for a scene that was cut from the film, set
to appropriate music. The sequence involves three of the boys stumbling
into the Creeper’s larder, as they flee from the creature.

The
Deleted Scenes, Moments and Lines(15m) are presented in a montage
that was edited together by Victor Salva and Film Editor Ed Marx. These scenes are
presented in anamorphic widescreen format, and appear to be virtually
complete. The audio seems rather odd, though, so it may not be properly
mixed. The scenes aren’t accessible separately.

There’s
little of any significance here: a bit more on-the-bus banter between the
jocks; a nice fleeting glimpse of the Creeper; and a rather laughable
sequence where one of the cheerleaders is unable to press a button using a
javelin. The most interesting sequence is a longer version of the dream
sequence where one of the cheerleaders follows Darius Jenner (the young
hero of the original film) into a clearing in the cornfield, where he
shows her the crumbling skeletal remains of troops, who have images of the
Creeper carved into, or painted onto, their shields.

Trailers
and TV Spots.
There are two UK theatrical trailers: a teaser (45”) trailer and a
theatrical trailer (“This Summer”, 1’21”) and a handful of short
UK TV spots (2’30”)

The
bonus materials are presented in anamorphic widescreen format. They show
frequent encoding and compression artefacts, suggesting that the bitrate
was being heavily crunched, but they are generally of very good quality.

Purists
might like to note that the film has been altered since it was in
theatres: Salva mentions that at least one shot has had stars added to the
sky in the background for the home video release.

The
disc’s navigation is nightmarish - perhaps that was the intention? Not only do you get a bunch of unrelated
trailers when you insert the disc, which have to be skipped individually
using the chapter skip button, you also have to wait for a lengthy Jeepers
Creepers II highlights clip before the main menu loads…each and every time
you return to it. Also, selecting each bonus feature is tricky, because
only one option is available at a time, and you have to wait for the
menu’s video (light from a torch moving over the wall where the options
are written) to play out to reach the one you want.

The
chapter menus are another area where user-friendliness has been abandoned.
On most discs you’ll see a photo representing each chapter, or a short looped
video clip, if the disc’s producers have made special effort. Both are
excellent aids in helping the viewer to navigate their way to a particular
scene. The Jeepers Creepers II chapter menus only offer titles,
and often unhelpfully vague titles, too, like “Stick Together” or
“Hunted”. To cap it all, the
bookmark feature – if your player offers it – has been disabled, too.

There
are no reviews available for MGM's Region 1 disc yet, but the published
spec's suggest that it will feature an additional storyboard sequence,
titled Creeper Ventriloguist.

Unless
explicitly stated, DVD screen captures used in the reviews are for illustrative
purposes only, and are not intended to be accurate representations of the DVD
image. While
screen captures are generally in their correct aspect ratio, there will often
have been changes made to the resolution, contrast, hue and sharpness, to
optimise them for web display.